Massively

These technical issues are certainly discouraging many users... many of my own landmarks were not reachable, and this makes SL a painful experience.

However this is not the bigger issue for me. The whole SL economical system seems to be downgrading constantly, specially since the gambling ban occured. On top that the new search feature that reduces the importance of traffic is making owners less prone to provide good camping...

And a-part from those users buying L$, camping is the base of all SL economics... I can't see any good days in future of SL right now.

More on my blog: http://second-life-millionaire.blogspot.com

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It seems my laptop has blown up at a pretty opportune time. Urgh.

Seriously, JohnLight, it's already been noted that economic flows in Casinos in SL were basically the same L$ being shovelled back and forth (overall in the casino's favor) excessively. Their removal has only removed a false flow of money in the economy.

It also has to be noted that the new Search engine is still not the defacto method of searching in SL for the average OnRez or standard non-RC client. Of course, the fact that traffic has been reduced in importance with the new web-based Search Engine will definitely be a concern, and inevitably impact on the reasons to keep running campchairs.

IMHO, camp chairs are from an ethical point of view hard to justify - the average camper wastes more on bandwidth and power than he or she obtains in payouts in many cases. The gaming of traffic that was camp-chairing was a significant cause of the death of certain initiatives and subsidies offered by Linden Labs on the basis of high traffic being a function of actual community interest rather than merely snapping at dollars. Few very-old-school residents will mourn the demise of this method of traffic cheating.

I predict that the demise of traffic as a key factor in Search will probably lead to camp chairs becoming obsolete, but that will not necessarily be a negative factor. if Residents opt to continue funding other less lag-inducing methods of providing newbie start-up L$, it will be harder to accuse them of having mercenary motives anymore.

Heavy users of camp chairs on their part will have to start thinking harder about exactly what their build or business stands for. Granted, the SL Websearch engine is as vulnerable as early-era search engines for blindly swallowing a description full of every possible keyword, but this will probably change as LL examines and decides on measures to punish such gaming, which is easier to detect and rein in compared to the subjective figure that Traffic has always been.

This will probably weed out those who come into SL only for the money. No matter - it's not like that tends to come with ethics, sadly.

The free lunch is over - if you want the money, work for it.

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I don't think JonLight Raymaker's assertion that camping is the base of all SL economics carries any weight whatsoever.

I don't like to compare my own earnings with others as the business I run is purely an entertainment exercise and more for roleplay than anything else. I sell a couple of things, and occasionally do custom work for folks at a rate which when I looked at on an hourly basis is frankly token. (I mean custom graphic work for less than 1$US is not running a business for profit.) I only have two products which I haven't updated for a year, advertised, or in any other way maintained.

Even so I make far more in a couple of weeks than Jonlight has made camping in his several months of work (as outlined on his blog). I've got enough that I can quite happily give out maybe a grand a week to newbies and builders, or friends, or simply buy stuff I'll never use in appreciation of the art that went into making them - my way of contributing tier to people who take care in their builds.

This is someone who isn't running a business to make any kind of money, and I'm sure there are many other people out there who are actually TRYING to make money. The small cheese I get from minimal effort makes the rates one gets camping seem absurd.

Considering there's a lot more serious businesses around than mine I find it hard to imagine that camping represents any serious impact on the economy - after all if it takes an hour and fourty minutes to earn enough to take a photograph or upload a texture, or an entire 40 hour week of camping to make enough to buy hair or something for the equivalent of a US buck, I really can't see it ammounting to much.

This camping income as well goes straight back into the economy for the most part, and into legitimate businesses. Even so I imagine the folk who might pay about 75 cents for a bunch of my builds probably didn't earn it camping. Certainly camping income doesn't contribute to businesses that sell say scripted swords - that's a minimum of maybe 6 days straight 24 hour camping for anything tasteful - or in real terms, the price of a big mac value meal.

As it stands the hire-a-crowd of camping is of dubious benefit to the community, businesses, and especially newbies who use it. The choice for "players" is either to devote months of sitting in a virtual mall surrounded by zombies so that they can maybe buy fun stuff down the track, or put pocket change into the economy by buying lindens and make themselves insanely rich, go out and blow it all having fun. They'll not have to wait weeks listening to the wine of their pc while they (and their av) sleep and waste more money in broadband and electricity than they get back in lindens. Lowering the artificial metric of "traffic" in search ranking is probably a good thing in the long term. Zombie avatars sitting in chairs have no value.

I would wager that the network issues lately are effecting many businesses more profoundly than just the camping trade.

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Here's my take on the calculations:

The official rate that LL tends to keep L$/US$ exchanges at is around US$1/L$266 (givve or take the requisite commissions)

The cost of a premium subscription is about US$9.99 a month if taken monthly, which entitles the Resident to 512sqm of mainland tier, and L$300/week in stipends.

Translated to L$ terms, that premium subscription is a few L$ shy of about L$2660/mth.

Assuming on average that each month has at least four weeks, we're talking about L$1200-1500 in stipends (more depending on the date of joining).

That leaves us with about L$1160-1460 in costs that must be covered. At L$1/10 minute we're looking at up to 14600 minutes of camping - that's around 25 days 8 hours and 20 minutes of staying perfectly still in a chair, doing nothing but talking and punching at anti-afk measures.

The time required to recoup costs from a premium subscription by camping would increase depending on the occurrence of failures to pay (I've seen this happen before either from technical issues or deliberate cc-owner malfeasance) as well as downtimes on the grid. And while you're doing this, the electricity bill and broadband fees have to be paid.

Nobody gets rich by camping. When mentoring, I do hand out a camping chair list occasionally on request... but I certainly make a fuss about it - in this manner.

You'd be better off honing your skills on WoW Rated Arena PvP and scoring a place at the next Blizzcon tournaments - you'd have more fun. Or Tabula Rasa Friday Night Fight PvP matches.

But please, oh please, spare me from the wretchedness of camping in Second Life. Really.

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